"Liberal Media" Suspends Keith Olbermann and only

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Personally, I think Assange is the sexiest person on the planet at the moment and would love to watch him, but I don't think his speaking style would fit with the current theatrical paradigm.

I just remembered that NBC owns (owned) Hulu. The senate antitrust leader apparently tried to get Comcast to divest Hulu upon its purchase of NBC, but I don't think it happened - can't seem to find anything about it.

Disney/ABC/ESPN/Go also has some control over Hulu. I'm not sure how much but they definitely have invested in the company.

Stop with the liberal media vs. conservative media BS. That dichotomy was invented to divide people.

I put "liberal media" in quotes for good reason. I tend to believe that all media is much more controlled and doesn't nearly represent outside viewpoints. In this country, everything is posited and framed within the conservative viewpoint. People scream all day about liberal media but I never see liberal media, only conservative viewpoints and contrarian to conservative viewpoints; you don't see "liberals" in the media forcing the issue about vice laws or truly progressive (and encompassing) taxation on the high-end incomes. At most you might see talk about income being taxed but not capital gains (which is where the top earners derive their incomes). It may be liberal at a very shallow face value but certainly not at any depth that could be considered truly liberal rather than simply reactionary to conservative media.

Good point.

Here, here. Well done if I do say old chap.

He apparently will be back to work on Tuesday...

I just read that to.

The so called "liberal media" is a myth. There is the media that is run by traditional ethics, which require the reporters to set aside their political views and try to report as neutrally as possible, but happens per survey to be composed of more reporters who vote liberal than who vote conservative, and then there is the right wing media that arose in response to the perceived but unproved bias and is not bound by traditional ethics, thereby making no serious attempt to set aside their political views or report as neutrally as possible. We've now got a few true liberal media programs trying to fight the right wing media on similar terms, but Keith Olberman wasn't reporting for an organization that had decided to take on a liberal bias and abandon the efforts at impartiality, like Fox has.

The whole thing points out how hard the traditional media has been trying to NOT be biased, even if the right refuses to give it any credit for the effort. I seriously can't decide if they should just abandon it all together, or ???? See, I think having all news outlets take on a clear bias is a mistake, but it's not like we can send Fox back into hiding or pull away Rush Limbaugh's power. So fighting fire with fire might be the only answer. I just ... hate it.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 08 Nov 2010, 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Two whole days. Oh the humanity!

I agree with you there.

The traditional media is highly biased because it is controlled by corporations, whose aims runs counter to the liberal point of view. That's why there is very little in terms of liberal viewpoints in the mainstream media. There is already an enormous bias in the media and it is highly slanted towards conservatism and business interests because corporations hold sway in the media itself and in government. The notion that corporate outlets are trying not to be biased is in my opinion hopelessly naive.

As Gore Vidal said, the US only has one political party, the party of business. While the Democrats do a little less harm, the aims of both Republicans and Democrats are essentially the same. The media's job should be to cut through all that and tell the truth, and look out of the interests of the people instead of the interests of business, but they can't because there is too much pressure on them to conform to the party line.

The majority of the media is liberal if you look at information concerning their voting patterns. Not to mention Chris Mathews getting shivers up his leg whenever Obama spoke during the 2008 campaign.



Funny, I've never advocated for silencing free speech. You don't agree with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh so they must be silenced... And people say the right is totalitarian.

Fox News beats all the other News Outlets on TV for a reason while MSNBC, CNN, etc. continue to lose viewers. It isn't cause people are stupid, it is cause the people have rejected the liberal propaganda.

Fact is I don't like Keith Olberman, but what he does with his own money as far as donating to political parties is his business. As long as he is open about it and admits his bias (which given his track record, it seems he doesn't realize he's seriously to the far left).

Who said they should be silenced, or anything remotely implying that they should be?

And what is your reference point as to what Center is Left Wing Europeans?!?!?

If you think Dems are conservative I hesitate to guess what you think Liberal is...

@bee33

Mistook what DW_a_mom said to advocating for censorship, I've seen it often enough at other sites to make that assumption.

Maybe from your viewpoint, the majority of the media seems liberal. But you won't see anyone on MSNBC advocating Marxism, and they don't just laud everything Obama does. In fact, most of the MSNBC commentariat have been consistently critical of Obama's overly passive approach to governing. Olbermann has been a major critic of Obama's appeasement of the right on the healthcare issue. Rachel Maddow has been very vocal about his inaction on repealing DADT. If you're talking about observable bias in the cable news commentariat, need I remind you of the way Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly blindly parroted George W. Bush during his presidency? Scott McClellan later admitted that Bush's White House staff even directly supplied Fox News with specific talking points upon which they felt the network should concentrate. Show me some proof that Obama supplies MSNBC with things to say on air, and maybe then I'd admit there's any validity in your assertion of left-wing bias of the media.



Fox News beats the other news outlets because it's not strictly a news channel. It's entertainment-- the real-world incarnation of Howard Beale's proverbial "traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players". Take Glenn Beck for example. He's one hell of an entertainer, I'll give him that-- but as a journalist, he's a joke. He himself has equated what he does to the job of a rodeo clown. What more can I say? When he gets up in front of his blackboard and spins yarns about Obama's socialist agenda and how he's trying to turn the U.S. into Soviet Russia-- that's all a show. There's no factual substance to it. The difference is, Olbermann and Maddow actually report news, which, I'm sure, is probably boring to a lot of people because it doesn't have all the same visual flash.



Rachel Maddow made an excellent point highlighting the difference between Fox News and MSNBC on her show last Friday, in the wake of Olbermann's suspension. The fact that MSNBC suspended Olbermann at all, while perhaps a bit of an overreaction, shows that MSNBC is in fact trying to maintain some separation from politcal entities (although, Scarborough's contributions to right-wing candidates, and his subsequent lack of the same treatment, does seem to suggest a bit of a double standard). That is what objective news organizations are supposed to do. Fox News, on the other hand, actively promotes and raises money for the Republican party. For example, Sean Hannity donated $5000 to Michele Bachmann's campaign back in September, and despite Fox News' reassurance that Hannity would disclose the financial connection on air when Bachmann was on his show as a guest, he made no mention of the donation. Hannity has also been an explicit supporter of Ohio gubernatorial candidate John Kasich (who was at one time a Fox News host himself), Kansas senatorial candidate Todd Tiahrt, and New York representative candidate Michel Faulkner-- all of whom were Republicans. Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin are contributors to Fox News, and they still do fundraising for Republicans as well-- Palin donated $10,000 to Joe Miller's campaign in Alaska, to beat their shared rival Lisa Murkowski. Surely, if they are to be regarded as journalists rather than simply shills for the GOP, you would expect Hannity, Huckabee and Palin to be just as open with their donations as Olbermann should have been-- right?

The truth is, comparing MSNBC and Fox News is, as has been suggested, a totally false equivalency. While some of MSNBC's hosts admittedly have progressive leanings, Fox News is an institutionalized fundraising tool for the Republicans.

Last edited by Chevand on 08 Nov 2010, 3:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.